Juvenile, most brutal of rapists, may get away with least penalty

New Delhi, Jan. 29 -- He took out the intestines of the 23-year-old physiotherapist with his bare hands before raping her twice.

But the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) declared on Monday that the minor accused among six who raped the girl and assaulted her friend on board a bus on the night of December 16 deserved a chance at reformation instead of punishment.

According to the police, it was the juvenile accused who had coaxed the woman and her friend to board the bus and after perpetrating the savage crime, he had suggested that she be thrown off the moving vehicle devoid of her clothes.

"The brutalisation of the couple had unfolded just three to four minutes after the juvenile coaxed them onboard around 9:30 pm, claiming that the bus was a chartered one heading to Palam," said an officer who investigated the case.

The first one to engage her companion was the juvenile before Ram Singh came to his rescue and attacked the man on his head with the blunt iron rod, the officer added.

The police had mentioned in their chargesheet that Akshay and the juvenile held and took the victim to the back of the bus where they waited till Ram Singh knocked the boy out cold and returned to sexually assault her.

Nabbed from the Anand Vihar ISBT on December 21 and nearly six months shy of officially attaining adulthood, the juvenile had first moved to the city with his mentally-challenged father's brother in 2007.

Subsequently, he had met his future 'mentor', Ram Singh, while working at a small bus stand at east Delhi's Karkardooma. It was his second job after having worked at a roadside dhaba in Trilokpuri.

"On the fateful evening, he had solicited the victim and her friend. It was purely a matter of chance - the fact that they were headed to Uttam Nagar - and the juvenile was touting Dwarka as the bus' destination," said the officer.

The Delhi Police, till Monday, had been treating him as a juvenile purely on the basis of a school leaving certificate obtained from a school in Badaun, UP.